Sunday, March 16, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Lake Tahoe is full to the brim and a heavy snowpack blankets the Sierra Nevada. The forest is green again after a third wet winter and the air is crisp and clean.
Below the surface, however, serious problems percolate.
The lake, with some of the purest water in the world, continues to lose its famed clarity because of polluted runoff from highways, homes and businesses.
A close look at the pine and fir forest reveals thousands of dead trees.
They are the casualties of a devastating seven-year drought that ended only in 1994.
Urbanization of the north and south shores of the lake is causing air pollution, visual blight and frequent traffic gridlock.
This is the stage President Clinton will find himself on in June when he holds a summit here on the future of what many people consider to be a national treasure: a place of spectacular but threatened beauty in the high mountains of Nevada and California.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has worked for months to get the Lake Tahoe summit approved by the Clinton administration, said just the fact that it will occur is a success, given the many people trying to get the president's attention on different issues.
"Lake Tahoe is one of America's treasures," he said. "We have to do more to preserve it. We owe it to the country."
While progress has been made to preserve the area's environmental quality, through purchases of sensitive land and with erosion control projects, the lake is in danger, Reid said.
"It's in distress," he said. "I don't think things are getting better, sorry to say. The trees are dying and the water quality continues to deteriorate. Transportation problems are getting worse."
Reid said the two-day summit is expected to involve officials from Nevada and California. An advance team is gathering information to determine where it will take place.
Hopes are high among Tahoe residents and government officials that the summit will produce lasting results, including continued and improved cooperation with federal agencies and money to reverse the damage to the lake and forest.
"It's extremely important that we have the aid of the president in finding funding for the projects that need to be done to keep Tahoe blue," said Drake DeLanoy, a Las Vegas attorney and chairman of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
The often controversial planning agency, created by the California and Nevada legislatures in 1969 and modified in 1980, regulates development in the basin to achieve environmental goals for water and air quality and a variety of other concerns.
DeLanoy said the agency has developed a long-range plan that includes $700 million worth of projects to restore the area's environmental balance over the next 10 to 15 years.
Much of the funding would come from private sources, but the federal government, which controls 80 percent of the basin through the U.S. Forest Service, is a critical partner, he said.
Much like Yosemite National Park, its popular neighbor to the south, people are loving Lake Tahoe to death.
The area's estimated population in the summer of 1995 was 102,000 in 20 communities around the lake. Millions more people visit, skiing at 14 resorts in the winter, boating and camping in the summer and gambling year-round.
The permanent lake population grew tremendously after the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley. There were only 2,500 permanent residents in the Lake Tahoe basin in 1950.
Jim Baetge, executive director of the TRPA, said he is hopeful the summit will result in a commitment to repair years of damage to the lake.
"We want to aim at where we need to go," he said. "The summit could help us accelerate our progress. We want the area to get better, sooner."
The biggest concern is the clarity of the lake, which has been declining by about a foot a year in the past three decades because of algae growth, which in turn is produced by nutrient-rich runoff from development.
The visibility in the lake was measured at 102.3 feet in 1968, but is only at 70.5 feet today.
A major player in the effort to preserve the lake is The League to Save Lake Tahoe, a conservation group formed in 1965 in part to stop a major highway. The project on the California side of the lake was stopped.
Rochelle Nason, executive director of the group, said the national attention of a presidential visit can only help the lake.
"People really do love Lake Tahoe," she said. "Tahoe receives substantially more visitation than Yosemite. And while Tahoe can never be a national park, it can be a very environmentally sensitive developed area."
Nason said she would like to see the summit recognize and endorse the decision-making process developed at the lake, where environmental and economic interests work together.
Nevada Assemblyman Lynn Hettrick, R-Gardnerville, a past chairman of the Legislature's oversight committee on the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, said he would like to see the summit endorse the current direction of the agency, which is toward reasonable economic development.
"We all want to preserve the beautiful scenic wonders that we can't replace," he said. "At the same time, for the people who live there and make a living there, we need to allow reasonable economic growth."
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